Tagged With kill screen

If there could be a scientific explanation for why fanboyism is a destructive force within video gaming, trust PBS (and Kill Screen's Jamin Warren) to find it. "A 2011 study found that ... people have biases against creativity." That's one reason why you're getting sequel after sequel every year.

"The best way I've ever been able to describe a car is think of it as a really complicated wind instrument. The engine is sucking air in, it's causing an explosion, and it's sucking air out. That creates a note that resonates through the pipe much as you would with a brass instrument. By adjusting the length and the diameter of the pipe, you change the note of the car."

OK, yes, fine. This post is at least partly an excuse for me to finally tag something "Downton Abbey" here at Kotaku. But in this case, the tag is warranted — over at Kill Screen, writer Sarah Elmaleh (who some of you may remember as the voice of Aeris in that column I wrote about silent protagonists) and illustrator Daniel Purvis have put together a series of fake playing cards depicting a Magic: The Gathering-like Downton Abbey card game.

Over at Kill Screen, they've done their yearly "High Scores" poll in which each of their contributors send in a ballot of games, assigning points to any game from 2011. The results of the vote are in, and Portal 2 is the clear winner.

Did that headline get your attention? Good, because you should go and read this super-cool piece by Kill Screen's Lana Polansky about mechanics, practice, saxophone, jazz, and Street Fighter. (It also features the amazing illustration above, drawn by Daniel Purvis.)

This is so cool. I'm not sure how many of you are aware of PixelVixen707 — she was a video game blogger named Rachael Webster who was smart, opinionated and quickly rose to a good amount of visibility back in 2008. She was also a complete fabrication. It was a huge mystery and a great story — a while back, the website Critical Distance wrote this exceptionally well-compiled breakdown of the situation tracking the course of her rise and eventual retirement.

Comics legend James Kochalka (American Elf) has penned this great comic in the second issue of Kill Screen magazine, in which we get to the core of why so many people love playing as a tiny plumber in red overalls.